


a long winter at the garden

by ifonlynotnever



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Curses, Injury, Madison Square Garden, New York Rangers, alternate universe: magic, background/implied marc staal/henrik lundqvist, everything is the same but msg is cursed (so everything is the same), lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifonlynotnever/pseuds/ifonlynotnever
Summary: the curse is hungry.(or: henrik can't see the curse woven into the ceiling of madison square garden, but he knows it's there.)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15





	a long winter at the garden

**Author's Note:**

> look, i'm not really in hockey fandom anymore, but i wrote this years ago (2017?) and it haunts me still.
> 
> title is from something either sam rosen or joe micheletti said once during a game.

hank skates out there sometimes, alone, no gear.

it's just him on the ice, head tipped back to look at that ceiling, the one everyone always talks about.

iconic.

beautiful.

he loves it.

he _loathes_ it.

—

he thinks he sees it sometimes, the gossamer threads of black smoke shot with royal blue, but it's never real. it's never there, not for him.

hank doesn't have the Gift, after all. he can't see curses.

when he skates under that ceiling in lazy loops and looks and _looks_ , he never really Sees.

it's there, though. he knows it's there. he's heard enough. he's seen enough. he's felt it weighing down on them all, felt the pressure behind his eyes when they win and the pinpricks at his throat when they lose.

he's never had too much to do with the knicks, but carmelo asked him about it once, after an event, in a roundabout way, and hank had had to tell him _no, i... no. i don't, i can't. but i feel it._

carmelo Saw.

carmelo Saw and he tried to break it. hank doesn't know how, doesn't know what he did, only that he tried.

carmelo is gone from the city now, just like anyone else who tried.

hank hopes things are better for him where he is.

—

marc Sees it.

marc has always been able to See it, just like mats, just like duc.

marc and mats—so talkative about everything else—rarely talk about it. or maybe they do? maybe they talk about it when hank isn't around.

no one really talks about it when hank is around; they know what he knows. they know what the curse has cost him, year in and year out.

over and over.

on and on.

but he thinks it's nothing compared to what it's cost mats and marc.

because the curse takes and takes and takes. it's _hungry_.

mats is a tenacious son of a bitch, though. he always has been. the curse takes his speech and his brain for a while, and then it takes hags, and then it takes brass, and he still, _still_ goes on. mats is a spiteful bastard, he really is. hank thinks he lives to antagonize the curse, lives to score and score and score. mats lives to laugh at the ceiling, even after he leaves.

hank loves him a little for it.

—

marc is not like mats.

marc is sly and sarcastic, but he is not spiteful. he has Seen the curse from the first time he set foot under that ceiling, and he's played under it nearly as long as hank has. marc has stared up at it intently, checking for cracks, squinting. hank can't count how many times he's watched him do it.

 _it's blurry,_ he'd said once, ruefully, at the beginning, before he learned not to talk about it. _i wish—my mom's Sight is better than mine. this, it's like a cloud, but different. just... how it feels. i don't know._ and he'd laughed and shaken his head.

he'd drawn it once, on some promotional poster or other, and then thrown it out immediately.

 _bad luck,_ he'd said. _that was stupid._

—

the concussions are not all the curse.

the concussions are hockey; the bad recovery is biology. but the curse does not help.

marc doesn't tell hank this, but hank knows. he's felt it, felt the way that just setting foot in the garden seems to weigh on his bones. the way everything is sharper, harsher. the way the garden's edges dig into bruises just that little bit more painfully.

not every bad thing that happens is the curse, but the curse does not help.

—

 _i think... you know, i think... there's a weak spot. i think i saw it once,_ marc murmurs to hank one day, and hank's heart soars. _i'll try and find it tomorrow, but... i think..._

he smiles, that small crooked thing. hank tries not to get his hopes up.

he does anyway.

he should know better.

 _i should know better,_ he thinks, disconnected, as he watches marc drop, watches him writhe, watches him bleed, watches him skate away, down the tunnel, away, away, away.

he really should know better by now.

—

the curse takes things.

—

when marc comes back, his eye is wrong.

his eye is wrong from the injury, but it's also just— _wrong_.

the pupil is too big and there's something strange about the thin iris around it. when the light hits it, sometimes hank sees a thread of royal blue that shouldn't be there.

 _it takes things,_ marc murmurs, when he catches hank looking. _it takes, but it can give, too._

his expression is ironic, not quite bitter, though there's a pained edge to his words. hank wonders if he's still aching. wonders if the lights are too bright, wonders if he feels the pressure of the curse against the backs of his eyelids.

 _i See better now,_ marc says. _[i See your cursed crown.](https://twitter.com/cytosine_37/status/1301347428407312384)_

and then he smiles, just a tiny twist of the lips, at the joke it isn't, hands shoved in his pockets.

_sorry, that wasn't really... i'm not... i'm sorry._

hank smiles, accepts it. tells him it's okay. tells marc he's glad he's back, because he is.

(he's glad he got marc back at all.)

—

one day, he thinks. one day they'll break it.

one day.

and no one else will lose anything to the smoke threading the garden ceiling.

—

 _it can't outlast us both, right?_ hank tries to joke to carmelo that day, at that event.

carmelo looks away. he looks like he's trying to smile, but his knuckles are pale and his jaw is tight.

 _yeah,_ he says. _no, yeah, you're right. no way._

neither of them believes it. not really.

—

(melo is gone in the summer.

and hank dreams that night.

dreams of the day the curse takes marc from him for good, the way it took mats, but worse.

the curse is hungry.

and the curse, he dreams, outlasts them all.)

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted [here](https://twitter.com/alonewithsheep/status/923337799390171136). feedback appreciated!
> 
>  **ETA (9/3/20):** now with ART from the absolutely amazing cytosine!!! [here](https://twitter.com/cytosine_37/status/1301343478316699649) and [here](https://twitter.com/cytosine_37/status/1301347428407312384)! please, please, PLEASE go show them some love!


End file.
